1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to real-time production of coupons, and, more particularly, to a method and system for delivering on demand, individually targeted promotions and recommendations coupons.
Business have become aware that they can promote more sales by furnishing prospective customers with coupons for their products. Thus, for example, mass mailings of coupons or other promotional materials can be used by producers or retailers to encourage prospective consumers to purchase the product.
It is also be possible to promote more sales once the customer has arrived at the store location. Various traditional methods of promoting products at the store are well known.
Nevertheless, the fact that a customer is at the store location is not a guarantee that anything will be purchased or rented. This problem is especially acute for the entertainment rental industry, particularly on heavy weekends and for new releases. A study of the movie rental and sale business shows that a high percentage of customers walk out without renting or purchasing a product. The reason is that customers arrive with a preconceived choice of product. If that product is not available, the majority of these customers look for a second choice, but still leave without making a selection.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mass mailings of coupons and promotional materials can be slightly more targeted through the use of mailing lists. Such mass mailings are based on pre-purchased mailing lists which are customarily developed by outside firms. Thus, a company will be limited in certain respects in determining the criteria for inclusion in the mailing list.
Another of the problems in providing coupons is predicting which coupons will be used by which customers. It is a waste of time and money to provide coupons to customers who are not interested in the products.
There is always the possibility that a promotional offering will receive a response greater than the available supply. Such an outcome may be perceived negatively by a disappointed consumer.
More recently, prospective consumers have been targeted at the check-out stand. That is, if a consumer purchases, for example, baby food, the computer will assume that consumer is interested in baby items and will produce a coupon for a particular brand of instant formula.
These types of systems do not take into consideration whether the consumer previously purchased that item. Indeed, since the targeted items are consumable products, there is less need to discriminate between items which may or may not have been previously purchased.
Another problem with these types of systems is that they do not develop a consumption history related to the consumer. Therefore, the type of coupon produced by the system is based solely on the item currently purchased.
One disadvantage of the system is that it does not include a mechanism to explicitly target the particular consumer. If the consumer makes a single item purchase, it may be extremely difficult for the system to determine an appropriate coupon based on the sample of the single item. This would be true even if the consumer had previously purchased hundreds or even thousands of items at the store, as would be the case at a supermarket. Therefore, the fact that the system produces a coupon for an item hardly suggests that the item is recommended for that particular purchaser.
Conventional methods are available which provide the ability to collect information concerning product selections and correlated the information to the individual consumer. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,157, to Kaplan, provides for a method for gathering information concerning an individual's selections at a product preview kiosk. Unfortunately, there are no systems which use this information for the production of promotional coupons.
Thus, there remains a need for a system which can provide individually targeted promotions and recommendations coupons. There is also a need for a system which can more accurately predict a likely purchase for the consumer. Another persisting need is for a system which will not promote items which are out of stock. Yet another need is for a system with complete flexibility in determining when to produce a coupon.